Pre-requisites For Successful Invisalign Social Ads Advertising

Don’t start advertising until you have these key elements in place

There is somewhat of a frenzy surrounding Invisalign advertising at the moment. Whether that’s dentists who are keen to sell teeth-straightening services to new patients, or marketing agencies trying to sell their ad services to dentists, everywhere you look there is a huge buzz of activity.

Whilst this is great for Invisalign, it’s not so good for dentists trying to sell the treatment. Hugely increased competition increases the pressure on price and the effort needed to stand out from the crowd to become the local supplier of choice.

It’s that latter element I want to discuss in this blog and also take a closer look at the elements you need in place to ensure that your Invisalign social ads campaigns stand some chance of success.

But first, let’s take a look at what’s happening in the current Invisalign advertising landscape and what we expect moving forwards.

The characteristics of Invisalign advertising in 2023 and into 2024

• significantly increasing competition
• the additional challenges of patients with financial constraints
• window-shopping has increased and patient loyalty decreased
• too many speculative enquiries
• fewer and fewer practices are succeeding
• agencies over-promising and under-delivering
• dentists expecting full “done for you” services – unfortunately that just doesn’t work any more

Basically it’s a lot harder than ever before by some margin and whilst advertising for Invisalign patients can still be very successful, you need to go in with your eyes open. This is why I’m recommending that you don’t start advertising before you have all of the essential elements in place, so that when the enquiries start to come in, you stand the best chance of converting them to treatments.

Here are the basic elements which must be in place before you start.

High quality bespoke ad content

There are way too many generic ads being published by agencies on behalf of dentists and the vast majority are just not working. Essentially the ad market place has become a mess of the same old generic material offering the same old things.

Those agencies and practices which are succeeding are the ones which have realised that their ad content and approach needs to stand head-and-shoulders above the huge mess of generic content that currently floods Facebook and Instagram. It’s the ads which include excellent video snippets, believable patient testimonials and excellent value propositions which are actually attracting the right sort of enquiries. So if your agency isn’t talking about this requirement and the commitment you need to make at the practice to help produce it, then steer clear.

A sensible ad budget

The days of advertising on Facebook for £10 a day are long gone unfortunately. You need a sensible budget, particularly in areas of high competition, and be prepared to flex this upwards as needed. Our campaigns typically start around £25 per day and can easily be double that depending on scope.

Patience

Whilst ads are “semi-immediate”, time is needed to bring an account to a level of maturity and to build and test various types of target audiences. So whilst you should expect some enquiries reasonably quickly, the quantity and quality of these should improve over time as your dental marketing specialist does their work in your account. This “maturing” can take several weeks and continuing optimisation and content refreshes will be needed to keep momentum. So please be patient.

A professional and robust lead-follow up process

This is perhaps the biggest problem we have to overcome i.e. practices failing to follow-up leads diligently and expecting “hot” enquiries to simply just materialise. Whilst there will be some folk who have done their research and will book straight into a consultation, many more will be far more speculative and will need encouragement, often three or four follow-ups. There will also be lots of enquiries which are very “cold” and no more than a quick look.

Where practices have the correct procedures and people in place to manage the lead follow-ups, the conversion rates are markedly better than those practices which don’t. This really is the difference between success and failure.

The team at Dental Media has helped practices to develop suitable scripts and training to ensure the right level of follow-up. However, we have also had a few examples where practices have struggled to implement advice and failed to make the most of the enquiries delivered. Just like investing time to help develop bespoke ad content, you also need to invest time into your lead follow-up process.

Before concluding, it’s worth a quick word of advice about the marketing agencies who offer to pre-qualify leads and guarantee treatments. Those promises might all very attractive but in most cases, they’re not quite what they seem.

In an effort to differentiate their services, some agencies offer things which looks a bit too good to be true and to be fair, they usually are. For example, a pre-qualified enquiry usually just means that the enquirer is asked to answer a couple of questions on a Facebook form before they can actually submit the enquiry. This is better than nothing but those enquires may still be “cold” and will require work from your team to convert.

When it comes to guaranteeing treatments, those agencies also tend to have quite strict requirements on what they expect from the practice in the first place e.g. high click budgets and low-priced treatments. So be sure of those expectations and agency small-print before you sign up.

Summary

Lots of dental marketers still make out that getting treatment enquiries from Facebook and Instagram ads is easy – but unfortunately that’s not always the case these days. Hugely increased competition, economic pressures and rising ad costs mean that you need to have prepared diligently before jumping in. Good ad agencies should advise what they expect from you e.g. bespoke content to help your ads stand out, so if they don’t, please be wary. Step away from anyone who claims they can do it all for you, as in the vast majority of cases, they won’t be able to.

Advertising on Facebook and Instagram can still be very successful but you have to work for it. Transparency is key and any decent agency should discuss the pros and cons before you start – if they don’t, then look elsewhere.

If you’d like to discuss in more detail and receive a proposal for starting your own dental practice social ads campaigns, please get in touch with the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548.